Keith Cowing also wonders why NASA would want a missile defense analyst on a space exploration advisory committee. My reading of the VSE and the Aldridge Report is that the new vision should support several goals, one of which is defense, both national and planetary. It would in fact be quite useful to have someone from the space defense community involved in the planning, to keep an eye out for opportunities for synergism, and to bring a different perspective in the development of systems that could both help in that defense goals, and perhaps complicate them if done without consideration of those other strategic needs.

While it’s not obvious to me exactly how they would fit (other than for the planetary defense role), concern about how LEO activity will coexist with potential LEO missile defense systems is worth worrying about, and it’s not a bad idea to have someone on board who does think about such things for a living.